The Good Suicides (33 page)

Andrés Moreno blushed. The sentence hung in the air, but Leire understood what he meant perfectly.

“A favor,” she said.

“You want the documents? I’ve brought you copies. Use them as you see fit, but—be careful. It’s a matter that will reach the courts someday, although at the moment it’s buried under tons of bureaucracy. And there are many people who want it to remain so. Lots of those implicated have died or retired, lots of the babies are now adults who don’t know the truth. There are many others, of course, seeking justice, embarking on a struggle against oblivion, but I fear that time will dishearten them, keep them quiet, make them disappear …”

Like Ruth, thought Leire. Her outrage and indignation had overtaken all feeling of nausea or fatigue. Like Ruth.

Montserrat Martorell opened the door of her house to her that same day, a little before two. Leire had gone to see her on impulse, and on this occasion the somber expression of Ruth’s mother made little impression on her.

“Here again, Señorita Castro?”

She wasn’t in the mood to beat around the bush, so she put the photocopied document under her nose, barely giving her time to see it. “I think we need to talk.”

Señora Martorell directed her to the same little sitting room she’d received her in the last time, but she didn’t bother to pretend she was welcome. She must have seen she was tired, or upset, because she invited her to sit and Leire accepted.

“Explain this to me,” said Leire. “Please,” she added.

Ruth’s mother put on some small glasses that hung around her neck on a delicate chain and glanced at the paper. Then she took off her glasses and focused her attention on her unexpected visitor. Leire stared once again into Señora Martorell’s gray eyes, intense despite her age.

“I don’t know what you want me to explain. My husband made a donation to this place almost forty years ago. He had a stronger faith then. Time, and life, cure that.”

Leire observed her, unable to decide if this woman was aware of what this document could mean. She decided to get to the point.

“Did you adopt Ruth?”

Señora Martorell folded the sheet of paper and spoke slowly in a voice trying to be cold but not quite managing it.

“Señorita Castro—”

“Agent Castro, if you don’t mind!”

“Don’t raise your voice to me. I’ve been very patient with you, but now you’re going too far. Let me remind you that you are investigating my daughter’s disappearance, not her birth. And I doubt that, thirty-nine years apart, there is any link between the two events.”

Leire was going to answer, but just then Abel decided to enter the conversation and did so in a painful way, almost as if he were protesting.

“Are you feeling all right?”

“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “I think so. This time he moved more forcefully …”

“Why don’t you do yourself a favor? Go home, have your baby. Honestly, I tell you this as a mother: nothing is more important. When he is born, everything that seems important now will simply fade away. You’ll think only about caring for him, feeding him. Protecting him.”

“I know,” said Leire. Her voice was trembling. “I’ll take care of him, feed him, protect him—but I won’t lie to him. I won’t invent a romantic story about his father, or the relationship I have with him. Maybe we won’t be the perfect family, but we won’t pretend to be. My son will know the truth.”

“The truth!” Montserrat Martorell made a gesture of annoyance. “Young people have an obsession with it that’s almost naive. Do you think the world could work on the basis of truth? I’ll tell you something, Agent Castro: honesty is an overrated concept these days. And there are
others that lamentably have lost their force, like loyalty, obedience. Respect for rules that have functioned, for better or worse, for years. No, Agent Castro, it’s not the truth that sustains the world. Think about it.”

“I think the world to which you’re referring no longer exists,” Leire replied, almost sadly.

“No?” she asked with an ironic smile. “Look around you. Do you think the people on the street, normal people, know the whole truth? There are things to which normal people, like you or I, cannot have access. That’s how it is, how it’s always been, however much people now think they have a right to know. If you take it on another, smaller scale, you’ll see that it also applies in refuges, in families … When you have your son you’ll realize that the truth isn’t important if it is at odds with other values like security, protection. And like it or not, you’ll have to decide for him. For that you’re his mother: to plot a safe path for him and avoid him suffering.”

Leire began to feel queasy again, but that woman’s last words made her think of something else.

“Is that what you did with Patricia? Move her away from the road you had planned for Ruth?”

Señora Martorell held her gaze, not blinking.

“I just told her to leave my daughter alone. She was smothering her. We mothers always notice these things. I spoke to Ruth, I put a little pressure on her and in the end she told me everything. She was so frightened, so confused … She didn’t know her own feelings, inclinations. My duty was to protect her.”

“Protect her from Patricia?” She couldn’t help the note of sarcasm in her voice.

“Protect her from something she wasn’t yet ready to face. And of which she wasn’t even fully aware.” She paused before adding, “It takes courage to be different in this life, Señorita Castro. My only aim was to avoid Ruth suffering. So, before Patricia left, I had a chat with her, alone.”

Leire imagined this woman, imposing in old age; she must have been intimidating as an offended mother. And Patricia would have felt betrayed, even ashamed in those years. She could almost see her after facing Señora Martorell, driving home alone …

“Didn’t you feel bad afterward?” It was hard to believe, it seemed impossible, that this woman in front of her felt not a trace of remorse. “When did you hear about the accident?”

Montserrat Martorell straightened up and answered in a frozen, emphatic voice: “My feelings are absolutely none of your business, Agent Castro.”

No, they’re not, thought Leire. She almost preferred not to know.

“You’re right. I have no right to ask you that, but I have the right to tell you something. Maybe you already know or maybe not, but at least from now on you can’t hide behind ignorance.”

And Leire told her about the stolen babies, the Hogar de la Concepción and Sr Amparo; she spoke about the possibility that Ruth’s mother hadn’t handed over her daughter voluntarily, that they would have deceived her by saying she was dead or taken her from her arms. That her husband’s donation was payment in exchange for a newborn.

Señora Martorell listened attentively, not interrupting her. When she finished her account, Leire was very tired and wanted to leave. Her apartment with suicidal tiles and blocked pipes suddenly seemed like the best home in the world.

“You are very pale,” Señora Martorell told her. “I think I’ll call a taxi to take you home. And … believe me, Agent Castro, because I say it for your good and that of your child: stop raking over a past that, even if it were true, won’t help us find Ruth. Focus on the future. Best for you and for everyone.”

Leire would have liked to answer that justice consisted of that, but she didn’t have the strength to do it. She simply looked at her, trying to communicate her incomprehension of this manner of seeing things. The woman didn’t appear to take it personally. Apathetic, Leire rose, took the piece of paper where Ruth’s father’s donation was recorded and
went to the door without saying anything else. She would wait for the taxi outside.

She longed to get home, shut herself inside and forget about this world. Perhaps it wasn’t deliberately cruel, but it was certainly deeply inhuman.

The clock on the nightstand indicated that it was only six a.m. and Leire turned over in bed. She had no reason to be awake so early. She closed her eyes and tried to get to sleep, as if it were something she could force by will. When she finally gave up and stopped lying in bed, a quarter of an hour had passed. Enough time to know it was better to get up although it was still almost night.

She went from the bed to the sofa, strangely without appetite for breakfast, and for a while she awaited movement from Abel. It finally happened and she breathed easily. She’d become accustomed to noticing it and when she didn’t she was overcome by a horrible fear.

Facing her, on the table, were the photos of Ruth, her file and the tape with the recording of Dr. Omar’s clinic. She didn’t feel up to watching it again and suddenly she realized that she was beginning to feel unable to continue with the case. It was upsetting her too much, invading her consciousness, making her uneasy. This can’t go on, she told herself. And slowly, assuming that for the first time she was giving up on a case before exhausting all the possibilities, she collected everything into the same envelope Martina Andreu had given her. After a moment’s hesitation, she left the donation document out. She’d give it to Inspector Salgado, who could do as he wished with it.

She had decided: she would give everything back to Sergeant Andreu, telling her she was too tired to continue investigating. She would
speak to Héctor Salgado and communicate all the details clouding his ex-wife’s birth. And then she’d concentrate on waiting for Abel to be born, with no shocks or distressing conversations like the one she’d had with Ruth’s mother.

But memory played by its own rules, and Ruth’s face, just as it appeared in the photo, kept reappearing. Ruth, perhaps adopted without knowing it. Manipulated by her mother until she had the courage to decide for herself. How would Ruth have felt when she heard about Patricia’s fatal accident? Like the character in
Breathless
, she’d been frightened by her own feelings and, in a way, had betrayed her friend to her mother. For Señora Martorell it had all ended there, but not for her daughter.

Ruth had kept the photo of Patricia, she’d written that love generates eternal debts. Even to those you no longer love. Through this misplaced sense of responsibility Ruth had gone to Dr. Omar to intercede for her ex-husband. Yes, she was sure. What had that perverse old guy said to her? Nothing very serious, because Ruth had changed very little after that visit, about which she’d told no one. Héctor had spoken to Leire about the last time he saw his ex-wife, when she accompanied him to the airport to pick up his missing suitcase. She seemed fine, same as always … Then she disappeared.

I can’t do it anymore, Leire said to herself. She was sure that if Ruth had some way of seeing what was happening in the world, she wouldn’t feel betrayed by this pregnant agent. On the contrary, she’d understand perfectly.

Halfway through the afternoon she left the station, bag now empty, seized by a mixture of feelings that went from relief to guilt, passing through a range of different emotions. Inspector Salgado was busy questioning a whole group of witnesses of a case and she couldn’t see him. It didn’t really matter—what she had to tell him could wait.

Martina Andreu had understood completely and taken charge of
everything. “It’s better this way,” she’d added. “You don’t know the trouble stirred up because of the file.” And she must have looked bad, because her words were the same as Señora Martorell. “Relax, Leire.” And yes, for once she planned to listen: she just wanted to return to her apartment, lie on the sofa and do nothing for what was left of her pregnancy. She tried to drive the image of Ruth from her mind without managing it completely, but determined to do it.

Because of that, when she met Guillermo at the door of the building where she lived she was tempted to tell him not to come up, that she didn’t feel well. But she didn’t: the boy seemed so nervous and she was so tired that she had no choice but to invite him in.

“Sorry for turning up like this,” he said, already inside her house. “I called, but you didn’t answer.”

He took out his cell phone to show her and left it on the table.

“It’s no problem, don’t worry.” She let herself collapse on the sofa. The room was spinning.

“Are you feeling all right? You’re very pale.”

“A little bit queasy, that’s all. It’ll pass when I’ve rested for a while. If you’d like something to drink, you can grab it yourself from the fridge.”

Guillermo declined the invitation, but offered to bring her something if she wanted.

“Yes, can you bring me a glass of water, please?”

He obeyed and returned immediately. He held out the glass as he sat down beside her.

“You said I could talk to you about Mama.”

Yes, she had said so, thought Leire, although just then it was the last thing she felt like doing. She took a sip of water and prepared to listen. He was sitting at her side. He was worried, no doubt about that. Even nauseated, she could see.

“I suppose I should tell Papa,” he said, “but he’s been very busy for the last few days and I thought I could talk to you first.”

“Of course.” The water felt good. “Tell me, has something happened?”

He nodded.

“Do you know Carmen? The landlady of the building where we live?”

Leire knew of her and was aware that she maintained a close relationship with Héctor and his family, one that went beyond what usually existed between a landlady and her tenants.

“Carmen has a son,” he continued. “His name is Charly, but he doesn’t live with her. They’ve not seen each other for years.”

She remembered hearing something about this Charly from Inspector Salgado, and of course it wasn’t exactly praise.

“Well, Charly has come home to his mother.”

“I’d say he’s not a good influence for you …” ventured Leire. “Do you know him well?”

“Actually, I don’t remember him from before he left, but …”

“But what?” Curiosity was overcoming her nausea.

It took him a while to speak, as if he were betraying a confidence.

“But I know Mama let him sleep at home, in the loft a few times.”

Leire sat up.

“What?”

“Papa wouldn’t have liked it at all and Mama asked me not to tell him. According to her, Charly wasn’t so bad and anyway, she said she was doing it for Carmen. A mothers’ thing. It was only three or four nights after we moved there—he never stayed long. I’d forgotten, but now, seeing him again, I thought it might be important, mightn’t it?”